Category: Pop (Page 28 of 216)

Herra Terra: Quiet Geist

September 16, 2010 /


RIYL: Kenna, Muse, The Killers

The press release for Quiet Geist, the new album from Northeastern electronic pop quartet Herra Terra, dared to name-check two big D’s that will get us to instinctively request a review copy like a Pavlovian dog: Depeche, and Duran. Silly us. We’ve seen this before, it’s almost never accurate, and as it turns out, it wasn’t accurate here, either. But in their defense, that’s probably because they knew that comparing it to Kenna’s New Sacred Cow would just leave people scratching their heads.

The funny thing is, we’ve heard quite a few artists lately who have taken inspiration from Kenna’s first album, the joke being that no one bought the record, but everyone seems to have heard it. And we’d bet dollars to donuts that Herra Terra could play the album start to finish at their next Halloween show, if leadoff track “Ejection Seats” is any indication. The songs are better arranged than they are written, which is not to say the songs are poor; it’s just that the music doesn’t stand above the nifty shifts in tempo or the slow builds, both of which anchor “You Were the Accelerator.” There is also the matter of singer John Paul Tonelli’s voice; It’s too muscular for the kind of music the band plays. That might sound like quibbling, but show us the last synth-driven band with a butch singer. Still, there is potential here. When the songwriting catches up with the band’s sense of atmospherics, they could be dangerous. (The Mylene Sheath 2010)

Herra Terra MySpace page
Click to buy Quiet Geist from Amazon

Alternative, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop, Rock

Chromeo: Business Casual

September 14, 2010 /


RIYL: Cameo, Zapp, Hall & Oates

If you’ve ever flipped the collar on an Izod shirt, owned a pair of Bugle Boy jeans, or purchased Hall & Oates’ Rock ‘n’ Soul, Part One on cassette or vinyl, Chromeo is your custom-built funky time machine – a synthy, vocoder-soaked trip to a parallel reality where musical history stopped in 1984. It was a pretty nifty trick the first couple of times around – and their last release, 2007’s Fancy Footwork, earned them a Daryl Hall endorsement and the ironic love of an audience too young to remember Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down – but most tributes to dead genres wear thin pretty quickly (see: Darkness, The). So it would be a mistake to expect similar results from their next album, right?

Chromeo_01

Maybe not. Business Casual doesn’t really add anything new to the Chromeo formula, but it doesn’t really need to – whether or not you believe P-Thugg and Dave 1 are serious, they’re really good at recreating that early ’80s vibe, to the point where you might find yourself wondering if you requested “The Right Type” on your local Top 40 station 25 years ago. Everything, from the buzzy synths to the soulful-but-not-too-soulful vocals, sounds like it’s being beamed in from a giant boom box on the planet Atari – and more importantly, the songs are as clever as they are catchy. It’s ultimately a fairly empty exercise, and if you’re old enough to remember when this sort of stuff was originally being made, it probably seems more than a little ridiculous to be witnessing a revival of something that was regarded as inherently disposable even when it was popular. What’s sillier, though: the idea of a band intentionally mimicking yacht soul, or the fact that Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” spent five weeks at Number One?

In the long run, it’ll be interesting to see where Chromeo takes this; even the artists they’re imitating moved on eventually, never to return. But hey, if they can deliver three albums that do this much with such a paper-thin gimmick, there might not be anything they can’t do. Break out the velour and pass the cocaine. (Atlantic 2010)

Chromeo MySpace page

Alternative, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Funk, Hipster, Pop, R&B, Songs

Soulive: Rubber Soulive

September 9, 2010 /


RIYL: The Beatles, G Love & Special Sauce

There is a reason why so many artists have taken a whack at the Beatles’ catalog – it quite literally has something for everyone, which is why everyone from Aretha Franklin to Motley Crue have covered them. Curiously, despite the fact that they were a driving force behind a million pop acts, it’s the soul singers that have gotten the most mileage out of their material. This makes perfect sense, really; before Brian Wilson came along, Paul McCartney wanted to be Little Richard.

Enter New York jazz funk hounds Soulive, who have tackled songs from both ends of the Beatles spectrum (the soul singers tended to stick to the earlier material) for Rubber Soulive, finding the funk in even the more white-bread songs in the Fab Four’s catalog. One wonders if the band heard the Beastie Boys’ cover of the Jam’s “Start!,” because the goings here are very similar in nature, though Soulive clearly have musicianship on their side. Their version of “In My Life” is surprisingly soulful, and Eric Krasno does as good an impression of George Harrison (on guitar, that is) as you’re likely to hear. Sometimes the band seems to be trying harder than the song deserves (“Eleanor Rigby,” “Revolution”), and as nifty as their arrangements are, they don’t exactly make any of these songs their own, as a certain “American Idol” judge is fond of saying. Still, it’s a perfectly enjoyable trip through the finest catalog in music, and the kind of thing that will likely land as backing music in movies for years to come. (Royal Family Recordings 2010)

Soulive MySpace page
Click to buy Rubber Soulive from Amazon

'60s, Artists, CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Funk, Jam Band, Jazz, Pop

Junip: Fields

September 9, 2010 /


RIYL: The Radio Dept, Elbow, Kings of Convenience

José González is best known for his Nick Drake-inspired brand of hushed folk. His haunting and ethereal vocal presence has garnered the Swedish singer-songwriter a sizable following throughout the indie world. Despite a steady flow of EPs and two studio albums for Mute Records, González has still found time to work with Junip – the trio he helped form in the late ‘90s. Where his solo material is often sparse in everything from instrumentation to its production, Junip offers González a broader sonic palette to work from.

Junip’s first two releases, Black Refugee EP (2005) and this year’s Rope and Summit EP, showcased the Swedes backing González’s sweetened melodies and delicate vocal delivery with a fuller, much richer arrangement style. Fields delivers on the promise of Junip’s prior studio offerings, with one hypnotizing track after the other. The band weaves the kinds of subtle melodic nuances that seep into your head without you even knowing it. There are several of these little hooks in every song, and new ones often reveal themselves with each repeated listen.

Produced by the band and Don Alsterberg, Fields has some of the better keyboard tones (courtesy of Tobias Winterkorn) in recent memory. The warmth and chameleon-like way of fitting its surroundings make the keyboards one of the highlights on an album with many. Songs like “Always” and “Faded to the Grain” find a group that proves that genuine song craft is not a dead art form. Fields might be too sophisticated for modern rock radio, but in a perfect world, Junip would be playing stadiums along with Coldplay. (Mute 2010)

Junip MySpace page

Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD Reviews, Folk, Pop

Robyn: Body Talk Pt. 2

September 8, 2010 /


RIYL: Kylie Minogue, The Cardigans, Little Boots

body-talk-2-robyn[1] No, you’re not remembering it wrong — Body Talk Pt. 1 really did arrive less than three months ago. Robyn took five years between her last two releases, but the long downtime had more to do with label machinations than lapsed creativity — and she proves it with Body Talk Pt. 2, which trades its predecessor’s frantic experimentation for a more traditional — and laser-focused — eight-song set.

Robyn’s best work has always rubbed at the sweet spot between machine-controlled pop and raw emotional power, and Body Talk Pt. 2 finds her right in her wheelhouse, from opening track “In My Eyes” (which opens with a quick callback to “Konichiwa Bitches”) through the thrilling six-song run that opens the album. The soaring melody and artificially sweetened harmonies of “Eyes” yield smoothly to the stomping, sparkling “Include Me Out,” which is followed by the crown jewel of the set, “Hang With Me.” Recorded as a ballad for Body Talk Pt. 1, it’s recast here as a surging ode to no-strings-attached romance that swaps out the original’s mournful tone for pure pop seduction. “I know what’s on your mind / There will be time for that too,” she promises over a plangent synth figure, cautioning “Just don’t fall recklessly, headlessly in love with me / ‘Cause it’s gonna be all heartbreak / Blissfully painful insanity.” You know she means it, but with hooks like these, who can resist falling in love?

The set’s weak link is undoubtedly the Snoop-assisted “U Should Know Better” — its cheap boasts would be funnier if they had a stronger song backing them up — but that’s a small complaint for an album with a batting average this high, especially in light of how quickly Pt. 2 is following Pt. 1. And she isn’t done yet: Robyn plans to release another Body Talk record before the year is out. Hang with her. (Universal/Konichiwa 2010)

Robyn MySpace page

CD QuickTakes, CD Reviews, Dance, Pop

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